On the way to a nuclear exchange of blows: According to Slovak Prime Minister Fico, NATO states are discussing forms of direct military intervention in Ukraine.
June 13, 2024
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico abandoned all diplomatic restraint on Monday. The leader, who is considered pro-Russian, said shortly before the European summit in Paris that several NATO and European Union countries were discussing steps toward direct military intervention in Ukraine.[1] The deployment of Western troops in the war-torn country would take place on a “bilateral basis.” This has since been confirmed by Polish President Andrezej Duda, who in an initial statement described “border security” and “mine clearance” as the tasks of Western troops intervening in Ukraine.[2]
Link: https://exitinenglish.com/2024/06/13/will-the-west-intervene-in-ukraine/
The word “bilateral” is crucial here. NATO and EU troops would not legally intervene under NATO’s protective umbrella, but on the basis of bilateral mutual assistance agreements. This would render obsolete NATO’s mutual assistance guarantee, which obliges the entire military alliance to respond militarily to attacks on individual NATO states. This legal arrangement is intended to prevent an automatic mutual assistance mechanism in the event of direct military conflicts between Russia and potential Western intervening countries, which would inevitably lead to a world war, including a nuclear exchange of blows.
In this context, Poland is considered a sure candidate for such an escalation step. A conscription campaign is currently underway in the eastern NATO country, with hundreds of thousands of citizens are being called up for military service.[3] Citizens born between 1997 and 2005 are required to appear before selection committees to verify their suitability for military service. If they refuse, they face fines or being taken to the police. French President Macron also no longer wants to rule out the deployment of ground troops in Ukraine.
The very form of bilateral assistance agreements currently being discussed in NATO as a legal basis for an intervention thus makes possible a first step towards direct military confrontation between Russian and Western troops. At the same time, the Western states in question would lose the protection of NATO in this conflict – and this at a time when the Western military alliance is already facing an uncertain future due to a possible Trump victory in the U.S.
The background to the increasingly concrete intervention plans is the ever clearer signs of Ukraine’s defeat, which in the long run is no match for Russia’s far greater military potential.[4] Kiev has long since missed the opportunity to negotiate a relatively advantageous ceasefire – it missed it at the end of 2022, when Russia was forced to withdraw from Kherson.[5] Since then, the Russian military machine has increasingly gained the upper hand in the merciless war of attrition. The longer the war goes on, the less likely it seems that a peace agreement will be reached and that Ukraine will remain independent.
The Thin Red Line
Direct Western intervention in the war-torn country is a red line in several respects. It makes a full-scale nuclear war between NATO and Russia – which was previously quite possible – highly probable from now on. Russia’s army can be defeated by NATO troops; the Russian military machine is still ineffective, riddled with corruption and unwilling to innovate. Russia’s material surplus in the war is the result of deals with North Korea and Iran and Russia’s conversion to war production,[6] which the West is avoiding.
The Russian army could be defeated by Western troops in a conventional war – which makes an escalation into a nuclear war, triggered by the use of tactical nuclear weapons, likely. And again, unlikely that NATO would stand still if tactical nuclear weapons were used against Western troops in Ukraine.
The losses suffered by Russia – which is still apparently incapable of integrated warfare – are still very high, but the greater quantitative potential of the Russian Federation is slowly asserting itself in the war. Ukraine is running out of “manpower” and resources for the front – leading to an increasing preponderance of Moscow, for example in artillery and air support. After the defeat of the Ukrainian army in Avdiivka,[7] a suburb of Donetsk that has been turned into a fortress, the Russian advance seems to be gaining momentum. Moscow still has strong reserves of hundreds of thousands of troops available for a spring or summer offensive. Each new line of defense that Kiev’s troops establish is inevitably weaker than the last one they were forced to abandon.
Therefore, it is a fact that only direct military intervention by the West can prevent Russia’s victory. This crisis-imperialist war[8] – in which Ukraine is effectively being ground to pieces between West and East[9]– can no longer have a “good,” reasonably progressive outcome. A Russian victory will not only put an end to Ukraine’s sovereignty, but will also give a further boost to authoritarian, fascist forces across Europe, such as the AfD. A Russian defeat – which would only be possible in the context of a Western intervention – will almost certainly end in a nuclear exchange of blows. The only viable option is a “dirty deal” between East and West that would divide up the battered borderlands.
The stakes in Ukraine are too high for either side – the West or the Kremlin – to simply accept defeat. Russia’s war of aggression was launched from a position of geopolitical weakness, as Moscow’s influence in its crisis-ridden and socially disrupted post-Soviet “backyard” increasingly crumbled.[10] For the Kremlin, Ukraine is all about maintaining Russia’s position as an imperial power. But the stakes for the West have also grown. A Russian victory would quickly destabilize the Western alliance system, especially in Europe, where economic stagnation and social unrest are spreading.
Russia and the West cannot afford to lose Ukraine for the sake of their internal stability – that is what makes this escalation so dangerous. But the red line that could be crossed here also applies to progressive forces. Support for Ukraine’s defensive war, which is legitimate under international law, including military aid, must come to an end in the event of direct military intervention by the West – the very likely spiral of escalation will lead to an exchange of nuclear blows.
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